The Case of the Disappearing Object

A few weeks ago my co-worker Kim called me about a problem she was having copying a chart from one report to another. Copying any QlikView sheet object from tab to tab or report to report is very easy but she was having a problem pasting the object into a new report. There was no error message but it was obvious that the chart was not being pasted successfully.
We discussed the possibilities and I focused on security setting issues but, by the end of the call, nothing had worked.

Two hours later, Kim called me back – she had figured it out and, like many good problem solutions, it seemed so obvious in hindsight. The problem was that the object had a Show Condition defined that would make the object visible only under a specific data condition. The data in the new report was different and the condition was not satisfied. So, the object was behaving as the Show Condition directed and it was simply not visible in the new report. Now, I know to be conscious of the Show Condition when copying an object.

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Copying a Chart From One Report to Another

Sometimes you want to copy a sheet object from one QlikView report to another. You might have two reports; say one for the finance department and a separate report for the supply chain department that both load similar data from the database. If the supply chain analyst develops a really great chart for the supply chain report and the people in finance could use it then you could copy the chart from the supply chain report to the finance report. You could always just recreate the chart from scratch on the new report of course, but it is easy to copy the chart from one report to another using Windows clipboard. Here’s how it could be done using our example:

• Open both reports


• Make a back-up copy of the "finance report" (the one you are going to change) by doing a save-as under a different name


• Now, go to the supply chain report that has the cool chart. You could use the Window menu to select the other report. Click on the chart so that the chart is selected (when the chart is selected the title bar at the top of the chart changes color).


• Select Edit->Copy from the menu


• Switch over to the report you are going to change, the "finance report" in this example. Make sure you are looking at the finance report and select the tab where you want the chart to appear


• Select Edit->Paste from the menu and the cool chart will get pasted into the finance report. It will appear in approximately the same position on the sheet that it occupied on the original report.


• Finish up by moving the chart to the position you want, make any required changes to chart properties (like data field names or title, etc.) and save the changed report

You can use this method to past a sheet object into several different reports or paste the same sheet object into multiple tabs on the same report. I use this method all the time when developing a new report with multiple tabs.

Another method that can be used to copy a chart within a single report is to click on the chart, select Properties, and then select Clone. A copy of the chart will appear just slightly offset from the original one. You can use your mouse to drag the cloned chart either to a new position on the same tab or drag it to one of the other tabs at the top of the report and, when you see the curved arrow appear, release the mouse button and the chart will now be on the other tab.